Cascade Failure
L.M. Sagas
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Morgan Stanfield

It’s almost like these Sci-Fi stories are coming from a Plot Generator:

1. A disgraced former officer
2. A down-on-their-luck small business owner
3. A ragtag crew on an equally ragtag ship

Stumbles on

1. A conspiracy to hide a mass killing
2. An alien race threatening to wipe out humanity (or at least a large portion of it in an interstellar war)
3. Some massive corruption scheme to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Can they overcome incredible odds to defeat the baddie and save the day? And perhaps

1. Make a nice profit
2. Find love
3. Resolve whatever problems were keeping them “on the outs” in the first place

along the way?

There’s actually nothing wrong with using such a Plot Generator Device; it’s been fairly common in creative writing workshops. The trick is making a good story out of the proposed plot.

In her first novel, Sagas chooses the “3-1-3” setup. Or perhaps a “1&3-1-3”, since the main character happens to be a former “special forces” soldier who has been accused of desertion. He joins the crew while “on the lam”….

With regards to the crew, there’s the usual deal about the crew being a surrogate family. You’re always going to get that whenever you have a team as your protagonist, so it’s not really something to make a fuss about. Other than their individual skill sets, they’re pretty interchangeable. The only crewmember who stands out is their engineer/mechanic/medic, who has macrame and knitting / crocheting as a hobby. But even there, nothing is really made of it. The ship’s nominal captain is an AI – but it’s not really clear if it’s a robot or integral with the ship’s computer and gets around through drones.

There’s a lot one can excuse – the usual Hero’s Death Battle Exemption, the minimal security around the “villain’s lair”, the ease at which our heroes “hack” their way into EvilCorp’s computers (by the way, only in fiction do companies keep detailed blueprints of their buildings online – you might be able to figure out a few basic things from lists of who has what office, and external photos of the building, but there’s no way you are going to get detailed floor plans and info on their HVAC setup) – it’s all expected when you’re doing a hard SF action tale.

The story moves briskly enough, even when they stop to do something one rarely sees in this type of tale – pick up supplies. I should note that EvilCorp isn’t doing anything much different than what unscrupulous companies have done to some extent throughout history, and the person put in the role of Bad Guy is barely involved in the story. Could have done with shorter “character development” flashbacks, though.

It’s a good read overall, with likable protagonists. Let’s hope Sagas can keep it up in any following novels in the series.